1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrical shifting device for use in a vehicle in which the shifting device includes a shift lever and an actuator which can activate or deactivate a shift stop for the shift lever.
2. Background Art
An electrical shifting device is used for the automatic transmission of a vehicle. The actual transmission shifting is performed either electro-hydraulically or by an electric motor whereas the particular shifting intent of the driver is electrically detected from the shifting device. The shifting device includes a shift lever and may include, for example, additional steering wheel rocker switches for up/down shifting.
The shift lever of a shifting device may have a multi-stable design in which the shift lever may be set in multiple fixed positions. Alternatively, the shift lever may have a mono-stable design similar to a joystick in which the shift lever has one stable neutral position to which the shift lever returns from a number of unstable setting positions.
In either case, sometimes it is desirable to exclude certain shift states as being the next selection from a currently selected shift state. For example, for a linear chain of possible shift states it may be advantageous to display when the selection possibilities for a shift state have been used up. As the detection and processing of shift states occur electronically, the exclusion of certain shifting possibilities can be performed by the underlying shifting logic system.
EP 1 464 875 A2 (corresponding to U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2004/0194567) describes a shifting device having an actuator which is able to deactivate a shift stop so that the shift lever of the shifting device may swivel out of the shift position defined by the shift stop. The actuator includes a relatively complex rocker arm system having a number of different actuators.